Strength in unity

By Jeremy Sole

CEO, NZ Contractors' Federation

It is heartening to hear that Contractor magazine readership is at 15,000. The Contractors’ Federation, as a significant shareholder in Contrafed Publishing and has a responsibility to the magazine, which we take seriously. We are committed to helping the magazine continue to grow further as the voice of the New Zealand civil construction industry, and to showcase the capability, achievements and interests of the industry and its clients and suppliers.

A number of recent Contractor subscriptions have come from new members of the Contractors’ Federation, who see the value in aligning themselves with organisations that are going to make a real and tangible difference to their businesses.

After 65 years and with a membership of more than 400 companies, plus a significant number of associate members representing our supply chain, the federation finds itself as the only organisation in New Zealand representing the interests of the whole range of the civil construction and general contracting industry.

Our members can be seen at the forefront of all of New Zealand’s largest and smallest infrastructure construction projects. Take for example, Kopu Bridge, Manukau Harbour Crossing, the Hobson tunnel project, Pike River coal mine, Victoria Park Tunnel, Makara and Manawatu Wind Farms, Hobson Deviation, SH20 extension, Dowse Interchange, Eden Park, Dunedin Stadium, St Kilda and Rosedale ocean sewerage outfalls, and a host of other sophisticated and leading edge construction projects.

You’ll also find our members at the core of many of the country’s residential and commercial subdivisions and developments, and you’ll find them working on the railways, ports and the airports.

The sheer breadth of activities that occur amongst our members and the range of clients they work with enables us to canvass, understand, and synthesise industry issues from a unique and strategic perspective.

In writing this month’s column, I’m thinking about our new members and those who may be reading this who are not yet members, and about how you can generate maximum value from being part of the federation family. Of course this just isn’t going to work for you unless you engage with your local branch and with the projects and work streams we have running locally and nationally.

In my time as CEO of the federation to date, I have noticed some young contracting business participating fully in the federation and I’m seeing these people develop a strategic perspective of the industry which is contributing to their business development strategy, and it is working.

In last month’s column I observed that this industry, like any other, is a system of activities and behaviours and that those who have more information develop an intuitive a sense of the leverage points and timing in the system and are more likely to have advantage and rise in influence and impact – often at the expense of those who don’t have this.

While on the surface a casual observer at many federation branch meetings might see a bunch of people having a good social time, there is usually some serious relationship building, positioning, and subtle negotiating going on underneath it all. So much so that at our recent annual conference, many of our sponsors specifically stated the best value and business leads come from the social interactions. You have to be in the bigger game to pick up what it is about and where it is going.

Some of the projects we currently have running are:

• A review of NZS3910, which we are doing as part of our involvement in the recently established Engineering Leadership Forum that comprises representative organisations from civil construction, local body asset management, water and electricity industries, and consulting engineers and IPENZ. We are in the middle of a project looking at the drivers behind local authority procurement decisions and the interfaces between local authority and the civil construction industry. We feel that this is an area which presents significant opportunity to lift medium and long term productivity and value for money for all interest groups in this area and for New Zealand as a whole and it is turning into quite an exciting project for us especially given the support and encouragement we are receiving from NZTA and Local Government NZ.

• We are also currently engaged in a pan civil construction and building industry health and safety review with representatives from our industry and the builders and subcontractors. The objective is to create a single organisation and single base qualification that works right across the construction industry and to have this tied firmly into national qualifications for those who want to pursue that path. Given our engagement with Department of Labour, ACC and a range of stakeholders, this new regime will be firmly rooted in what the industry wants and what will support all the parties achieving their goals for health and safety, profitability and productivity for the long haul.

Finally since I’ve run out of room to write any more, I strongly encourage every contracting firm to participate in the federation’s industry capacity survey to support our work in creating a strong industry through a greater understanding of the current dynamics playing out. We have put up a prize draw of $500 in Shell vouchers for those who participate and leave their email address. Please be assured that your confidentiality is assured as we have BusinessNZ managing the survey for us and the email addresses and survey data will arrive at our place separately and are not attributable to each other. Go to www.nzcontractors.co.nz and click on the bright red survey link button to complete the survey.